Reason Not To Put Your Money in a 401K with Stephanie Walter

Stephanie Walter started her insurance agency in 2005. Along with building her agency, she began following her passion for real estate and investing in commercial real estate to generate passive income.

This led her to found Erbe Wealth and authoring The Insurance Professional’s Guide to Real Passive Income which outlines five steps any insurance professional can take to reach financial freedom through passive investing.

Watch the episode here

Brett:

I’m excited about our next guest. She’s in the great state of Colorado, and she started an insurance agency in 2005. Along with building her agency, she began following her passion for real estate and investing in commercial real estate to generate passive income. This led her to founding?Erbe Wealth?and offering the insurance professionals guide to really pass a guide to real passive income, which outlines five steps any insurance professional can take to reach financial freedom through passive investing, and so much more. Please welcome the show with me,?Stephanie Walter, Stephanie, how are you?

Stephanie:

I’m great. How are you doing?

Brett:

I’m doing fantastic and glad to have you on the show, we’re gonna be talking about reasons not to put your money into a 401k as well as multiple streams of income and ways to do that with Stephanie Walter. But before we go there, Stephanie, I want our listeners to get to know you a little bit better. So would you give us a little bit more about your story and your current focus?

Stephanie:

Sure, yeah, I started just out of college, working for a big insurance company, realized within the first few years of getting the 2% raises, that just wasn’t for me. And that time I quit and started my insurance agency here in Colorado. And I’ve always loved real estate just hadn’t had a lot of education about it. And so I just kind of went on my gut and just got very fortunate to have invested largely from 2005 to 2009. And just in 2016 got very curious about, doing things bigger on a larger scale. And that’s when I learned about syndications really did a deep dive, in learning about those, and completed my first syndication in 2018. I realized after doing it by myself that I did not want to continue doing all the elements of syndication by myself and realize that I really enjoyed raising money. And just from there on, I’ve just really, that’s what I’m really focused on is raising money and educating investors and I just get an I enjoyed that very much. And I was just able to sell my agency and July 1 of this year, and I do this full time, I guess you’d say. Though, I don’t work full time.

Brett:

Amazing. Thanks so much for sharing that. By the way, you can learn more about Stephanie Walter at?ErbeWealth.com. And you might be wondering, how do you spell that it’s E R B E wealth.com. So, Stephanie, I believe we’ve all been given certain gifts in this life. I want you to go back perhaps to your high school days, college days, go back ways, you know, and some people call these things strengths are superpowers, and I believe their God-given gifts, and they’ve given to us be a blessing and help to others. So I’m just curious, what are those one, two strengths or gifts that you believe you were given? And how does that help how you help and bless people today?

Stephanie:

I think the gift of communication is for sure. But also, I think, the gift of hard work and determination, which I got from my dad and my grandfather, just very, very hard worker, I’m able to really, have that entrepreneurial spirit, which I think at the end of the day, I have no question that what I do now affects so many more people than had I stayed in a regular W2 job not that there’s anything wrong with that. But I just really enjoy opening up new ways people can make money that they never thought of before.

Brett:

Beautiful, absolutely love that gift of communication, hard work and dedication, and opening up freedom and opportunities to make a big impact on a big scale. through new financing and passive income streams and such, so let’s dive right into the topic at hand. Right, which is, first of all, reasons not to put your money in a 401k we’ll start there, and then we’ll talk about multiple, income streams, with Stephanie Walter. So what’s the number one secret Stephanie to or even the number one reason not to put your money into a 401k?

Stephanie:

Well, that took me some time to get to understand and it largely came from me working with my very wealthy investors, and I would look at over there, you know, investments and what they had going on. And it really surprised me that, well over probably 90% of them had no 401k. And that of course was towards the beginning of my career of raising money, and just kind of looked into that further. And when to read a lot of different books and understand why. And the reason is, is that wealthy people like their money to be working for them at any amount of time, they don’t want their money to be set aside in a place where they can’t touch it, and it can’t be actively working for them generating most of the time generating a cash flow that comes to them. They view money as something that they want to be working for them. They don’t want to, they also want to, they’re very clear about how much their money is making at any time, and how much they have. And I think the largest question on the 401k side is, if someone has 500,000, in their 401k, in 20 years, how much do they really have, you have a financial planner that can give you an idea, but it’s all an idea, as well as we have no idea what the tax ramifications are going to be? And that is just something those two things keep I think wealthy people out of investing in 401k’s.

Brett:

Very well said, Yeah. So many interesting thoughts there. So yeah, I’ve always loved the ability to invest in cash flow, producing real estate, something that you can control or add value to something that you can take over the management if you need to, something you can add such as apartment complex, you can also move into it if you ever needed to, right I mean, so many ways, and then also tax advantages for depreciation offset income and, and hopefully the 1031 exchange standard stays around. And Biden doesn’t limit it so much that it gets eliminated. So lots there. But I also shift I went from forgetting the 401k. And the other reason I wouldn’t forget that, and even the self-directed IRA, I just cashed out of that. Because what I found was, I was like, you know what, I’m 38. And a couple of years ago, I was like, I don’t want to wait for tom like 60 or 70. I don’t have to wait to potentially have freedom with my family, and my next business venture and not be able to enjoy the wealth now. I don’t want to just park it there. I don’t know, I might even live on 60 or 70. Who knows? So I said, you know what, I’m gonna focus all my attention on cash flow producing real estate in my own business venture. Right? So I can build wealth now, that could help me Give me five or 10 years back because one thing we can’t get back in time. The one thing that no one can get back. And if you’re having to put into this retirement account, that typically you’re going to have these penalties if you take it out, you know, you’re gonna hit with the big tax ramifications. It’s can be a big challenge. But most folks are, I call it the blockbuster way of planning. They’re just that’s what they’re taught to do. Should you just do these certain things, but I’ve shifted. So any thoughts on that Stephanie?

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